New chancellor named for UNC Wilmington

A business dean at West Virginia University will be the next chancellor of UNC Wilmington.

Jose “Zito” Sartarelli, WVU’s chief global officer and dean of its College of Business and Economics for the past five years, will take the helm at UNCW on July 1 at an annual salary of $350,000. He was elected to the UNCW position Friday by the UNC Board of Governors, at its meeting at East Carolina University.

Sartarelli succeeds Interim Chancellor William Sederburg, who has led UNCW since former Chancellor Gary Miller left last year to become president of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Sartarelli, 65, is a native of Brazil who spent three decades in marketing and management for three large pharmaceutical companies – Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson.

During his short time in higher education administration, he increased WVU’s global presence by recruiting more international students and forging partnerships with universities in Germany, China, Israel, Brazil and other countries. As business dean, he helped establish six new joint degrees with other university departments and launched a fully online master of business administration degree program.

At UNCW he will oversee a coastal campus with 14,000 students, an array of undergraduate and master’s programs, plus doctoral degrees in marine biology and educational leadership.

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On Friday, Sartarelli talked about the importance of bringing in the best students and faculty, and providing them the right elements for excellence in learning and scholarship.

“How do you create an environment in the university, which is proactive, which provides the students experiential learning?” he said. “How do you make sure that you enable students to succeed and grow? Because education is not just educating to get a job necessarily. It’s educating to get a job plus become a citizen. How do you make sure you educate students to become citizens of this great country?”

At WVU, Sartarelli said he was aggressive in bringing in companies to recruit students for jobs and internships. And he said fund raising would be a major goal at UNCW.

Sartarelli received his undergraduate degree at a university in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Michigan State University, where he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in business.

UNC President Tom Ross said Sartarelli has the perfect blend of experience.

“He has incredible international experience that’s going to help Wilmington connect globally,” Ross said. “It’s going to help students understand the world in which we’re living. ... I think he brings great business acumen that will help manage the university well, which is important. But what struck me when I talked to him was a deep commitment to education and an understanding of university life.”